The OH-58 helicopter circled some 800 feet above a sparsely populated hillside on the Big Island of Hawaii, like a hawk waiting to pounce on a mouse. But it wasn't dinner the mechanical bird was hunting, it was marijuana.

The Kiowa, one of two assigned to the Hawaii Army National Guard's Reconnaissance and Interdiction Detachment, or RAID, was supporting a Hawaii County Police Department marijuana-eradication mission. An officer from the agency's Kona Vice Squad leaned out the left side of the cockpit, trying to get a better look at the patch of brilliant green vegetation that had caught his eye.

Moments later, certain of what he'd seen, the airborne lawman vectored a truckload of fellow officers to the patch. After pulling up the plants and searching the area for clues to the owner's identity, the officers set off for the next site spotted by their “eye in the sky.”

Aid to Law Enforcement

Unlike federal military personnel, National Guard members are Constitutionally permitted to assist local, state and federal law-enforcement agencies with their counterdrug activities, said LTC Arthur J. Logan, the Hawaii Guard's counterdrug coordinator at the time of Soldiers' visit.

“We're permitted to provide assistance with both personnel and equipment, and our RAID is one of the ways we provide that support,” he said. “Honolulu is the only city in the state with its own police helicopter, so being able to call upon the RAID OH- 58s is a huge benefit for other local law-enforcement agencies.”

The Hawaii Guard was a pioneer in using its resources to assist law enforcement in the counterdrug mission, Logan said.

“While the National Guard Bureau's counterdrug program officially began in 1989, its genesis was in 1977, when both Hawaii and California first provided Guard helicopters to assist in marijuana eradication,” he said.

Since that time, the Hawaii Guard's counterdrug effort has grown to encompass other types of aid.

“We support some 28 local, state and federal law-enforcement agencies with Army and Air Guard intelligence analysts and operational case-support personnel,” Logan said. “In addition, I also have four drug-demand reduction teams that each visit about 30 schools during each school year. Since Hawaii recently went to a year-round school schedule, the teams stay very busy.”

A Year-Round Effort

While the Guard assists law enforcement in many ways, the RAID helicopters are perhaps the most visible. Since marijuana grows year-round in Hawaii's ideal climate, marijuana eradication is a year-round effort.

“We are extremely busy in the state,” Logan said. “At any given time we're supporting counterdrug operations on one or two of the islands, working with local and state police and representatives of the DEA's marijuana- eradication program.”

The RAID aircraft fly a combined average of 740 hours a year, most in support of marijuana eradication. Each Kiowa usually flies about four missions a month, with each mission consisting of several flights in the same general area over a number of days, Logan said.

While the OH-58s are certainly not the newest aircraft in the Army -- both were first acquired during the Vietnam War -- they are ideally suited to their counterdrug role, said one of the RAID pilots, a senior warrant officer with more than 7,500 hours of career flight time (whose name we've withheld for security reasons).

“They're light, nimble and don't have the ‘military' look of a Huey or Black Hawk,” he said. “We've equipped them with powerful searchlights, and with landing skids that are taller than those on a regular OH-58. That lets us fit them with a forward looking infrared pod beneath the forward fuselage.”

The FLIR pod allows the pilot and law-enforcement officer to see in the dark, permitting them a close-up, detailed view of action on the ground without revealing the helicopter's presence, he said.

“Being able to make use of the FLIR is certainly a huge benefit to all of us in law enforcement,” said Randy Wagner, the Drug Enforcement Administration's domestic cannabis eradication and suppression program coordinator for Hawaii. “But the biggest benefit is just the existence of the RAID aircraft. We have only two DEA helicopters in the state, so being able to call upon the RAID's two OH- 58s doubles our aerial capability.”

The presence of the RAID Kiowas is also vital to the local police, said Detective Derrik Diego of the Hawaii County Police Department.

“Our county has some of the most rugged terrain in the islands, and if we couldn't do reconnaissance from the air our job would be much harder,” he said. “Being able to call on the RAID aircraft is absolutely essential for us.”

Cat and Mouse

The aerial search for marijuana in Hawaii is a cat and mouse game, Logan said.

“The growers are getting very cagey. For example, they'll plant the pot beneath wires that they think will prevent helicopters from flying overhead, or on hillsides that are prone to fog or clouds, because they think we can't see the plants,” he said. “And they're growing the pot in smaller patches, rather than in the vast fields that were common in the 1980s.”

Moreover, it's common for pot plants to be found nestled among the rows of macadamia trees and coffee plants that dot the Big Island, Wagner said.

“But having the ability to do aerial reconnaissance allows us to defeat most of the countermeasures the growers take, and gives us a better than-even chance to locate and then eradicate the pot,” he said.

A Vital Mission

Despite the challenges inherent in the counterdrug mission, it's one that ultimately benefits both the Guard members and the people of Hawaii, Logan said.

“Army and Air Guard members learn new skills through their involvement in the counterdrug program, skills that enhance their military knowledge and abilities,” he said. “So they're better trained when it comes time to perform in their traditional Guard roles.”

And the dedication the Guard members bring to the mission is both recognized and appreciated, Wagner said.

“The Guard members are always very professional and always ready to assist us in any way they can, on the ground or in the air,” he said. “And we in law enforcement especially appreciate the fact that the Hawaii Guard has not wavered in its support for counterdrug operations, even though many of the Guard members have been deployed to Iraq or Afghanistan.”

It's not hard to understand why the Guard members take the counterdrug mission so seriously, Logan said.

“This is a job that all of us can support and believe in, because the whole purpose is to keep illegal drugs off our state's streets and out of the hands of children,” he said. “That's a vital mission in anybody's book.”

(Editor's note: This story was first printed in the April issue of Soldiers magazine.)